


102 Minutes

by DramaticSheep



Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: 9/11, Family, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27372877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DramaticSheep/pseuds/DramaticSheep
Summary: With thousands of lives on the line, can Elizabeth do her part to help avoid a tragedy? A two-part story based on a lilacmermaid prompt
Relationships: Elizabeth McCord/Henry McCord
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**102 Minutes**

**Based on the lilacmermaid33 prompt: Elizabeth keeps warning her superiors that a major attack is coming but she isn't taken seriously, so she ends up leaving the CIA ... and then 9/11 happens.**

**A/N: I guess this story can be considered AU as Elizabeth's reason's for leaving the CIA differ from canon, also the Baghdad ultimatum was never given by Henry. I'd also like to express my heartfelt thanks to lilacmermaid who inspires us to write these stories, we are so grateful for everything you do for the MSec fanfic community! This was meant to be a one shot but I realise now that it's too long for me to be able to do that, It'll probably be between 2-4 chapters long.**

**This fic includes excerpts of dialogues from CNN's live footage of the 9/11 attacks.**

September 11 th 2001

8:30 AM

Elizabeth McCord sat at the kitchen table of their new home, a bowl of cereal to her left and her coffee cup to her right, she browsed through the morning's paper as she absent-mindedly ate a spoonful of cereal every few minutes. They'd not long moved into the farm, to be honest it still didn't feel real. A month ago she'd been a top analyst working in Langley for the CIA, and today here she was, unemployed – sitting in her kitchen while Henry was at work, Ali and Stevie were at school and Jason was at day care.

She hadn't wanted to leave her job, and in some ways she really missed it but she had to admit being able to spend a lot more time with her young children had made a whole world of difference. Life was so different now, at first it'd taken a while to get used to the silence that lingered out at the farm after having spent so many years living in the city where a backdrop of cars honking, police sirens blaring, children screaming and laughing on their way home from school every afternoon was the norm.

As much as she hated to admit, she felt that she'd been forced to resign from the CIA, just thinking about it filled her with deep anger, she felt betrayed by her superiors, her colleagues, her so-called friends and even the President of the United States.

It had all began back in Spring. Elizabeth was a highly skilled analyst, she'd been taken on at Langley immediately after graduation, but they'd been scouting her for a few months prior to that. She was good at her job and her supervisors knew it, so when she came across some fairly damning evidence that a major attack was being planned against the United States, she was quite taken aback when her superiors hadn't taken her seriously.

She'd fought and argued with them to no avail, she'd turned to her colleagues and had begged them to take a look at the intel, they'd just shrugged her off and told her she was being paranoid, it was infuriating. The worst part about it was she was completely alone, she wasn't allowed to talk to anybody outside of the CIA about her worries and that meant she couldn't tell Henry, her main support network.

In the following months acts of terror on the whole were rapidly declining, terrorists were going off the radar and to Elizabeth that was probably the most damning evidence of all. The world felt like a dormant volcano moments away from erupting, something about it all just wasn't right and she knew it. Why were the camps closing? Why were the terrorists hiding? What were they planning?

By the end of July, she'd documented all of her findings and presented it to her supervisor, Conrad Dalton – in the hopes that he would raise the alarm in ways which she had been unsuccessful. It was a huge document, at least 500 pages of audio transcripts, highlighting potential threats that could very well be due to take place on American soil. Conrad had taken the document from her as they both sat at his desk in his office.

"You're going to have to give me the cliff notes, Bess." Conrad had said as he flicked through the huge stack of papers.

"We have reason to believe that a major terrorist attack is being planned against the US by Al Qaeda, if what we've uncovered comes to pass, the fallout will be catastrophic and thousands of American's will die." She had explained, Conrad had swallowed as he took in the information, this was something huge, and the lives of many innocent civilians now rested in his hands.

"I see." Conrad sighed. "I'll see what I can do, maybe I can bring this to Mr. President during the next presidential briefing."

"Thank you, sir." Elizabeth had said, she stood and shook his hand and left his office, returning to her desk. She'd heaved a sigh of relief as she took her seat, feeling better now knowing that she'd done all she could and the matter was out of her hands, she'd done the work, she'd escalated as per protocol and it was now up to the higher ups to nip this thing in the bud.

Her heart had sank to the pit of her stomach when, one week later she once again sat on the opposite of Dalton's desk, as he slowly shook his head.

"They brushed me off, Bess." Conrad had said.

"Are you kidding me? After all of that evidence?" She'd questioned him. Conrad had nodded in despair.

"I passed along the document for review, but they're not taking it as high priority."

"I can't believe this!" Elizabeth exclaimed, in shock. "There's really nothing else you can do?"

"My hands are tied, Bess."

"I can't do this." She's told him, standing from her seat.

"Can't do what?" Conrad had asked.

"I can't work for a government agency who turns a blind eye against the safety of it's citizens. I can't continue to do my job knowing that something may be coming and I could have prevented it."

"What are you saying?" Conrad asked.

"I guess I'm saying I quit." Elizabeth told him, a fierce finality in her tone of voice.

Conrad had tried to reason with her, to get her to stay but her mind was made up, that very same day she'd packed up her things, barely giving the place a second glance as she walked out of those huge double doors for the last time ever, on August 6th 2001.

Henry had been surprised when he found out that his wife had walked out of the job he'd known she loved, but overall he had supported his wife's choices. With his salary and the fact that they could reduce the amount of days that Jason would need to be in day care, they'd probably be able to get by. In his opinion, Elizabeth deserved this break, it felt like she had worked flat out since college, all while raising three children and trying to have some semblance of a normal life.

Elizabeth had returned to work only a few months after Jason's birth, it had been a struggle being away from the newest little guy in her life, but she'd believed that she was doing it for the greater good. When nobody at work started to not take her seriously about the threats of a major terrorist attack being plotted, she'd started to regret her decision. At least now she'd be free once again to bond with her baby boy.

She took another small sip of coffee as she flicked slowly through the pages of the newspaper, the tv chunnering away quietly in the background, the CNN morning news, something about hurricane seasons, although she wasn't really paying all that much attention. Elizabeth rolled her eyes as the news continued, now talking about the New York stock exchange, it must really be a slow day for news, sighing she went back to reading her newspaper.

"This just in, you are look at obviously a very disturbing live shot there, that is the World Trade Center and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center." The news reporter announced, Elizabeth froze, dropping her newspaper and instantly her eyes darted towards the TV, sure enough, there it was, the north tower with a gaping hole in its side, smoke rolling out all around it and filling the nearby sky , the giant words 'breaking news' burned into her memory. Her stomach gave an awful lurch, surely it couldn't be?

She picked up the tv remote from the kitchen counter and increased the volume on the TV and perched herself gingerly on the counter in front of it, her eyes never once leaving the screen. She watched intently as the news reporters brought on a local eyewitness to fill in some of the details of what had happened.

"Hello? Yeah I just witnessed a plane that appeared to be cruising slightly lower than normal altitude over New York City and it appears to have crashed into uh, I don't know which tower it is but it hit directly in the middle of of the World Trade Center towers."

Her mind began to spin as she listened to the reporters discuss what type of plane it was, which they had seemed to settle on a 737, a large passenger jet; she felt sick, there was no way this could be an accident. The broadcast cut to scenes from the streets of Manhattan, the room filled with the sound of sirens as Elizabeth turned the TV down a little. CNN's local correspondant was running around the streets asking local passers-by if they had seen what happened. Elizabeth watched in silence as a woman on the street had described the huge explosion, saying that all of the windows had been blown out.

She picked up her cell phone and internally debated calling Henry at work, but she knew he'd probably be starting to give one of his lectures and she didn't want to disturb him, she still had the tiniest sliver of hope that this could hopefully just have all been a tragic accident. She placed her phone back down on the counter and continued to watch.

The news reporters had brought on yet another eye witness who was describing what had happened, and how it seemed as though the plane was still inside the building, about 80 floors up. Elizabeth's heart ached for the people on that floor and the surrounding floors who were probably now all dead, if not horrifically injured, who were just settling down to begin their day. She was pulled out of her thoughts as she saw a black blur fly in from the edge of the screen towards the two towers.

"Wha-" She began, leaping down off the counter in an effort to move closer to the kitchen TV. She gasped as she saw a huge plume of flames erupt from the left side of the tower.

The news reporter interrupted his eye witness sharply "Hold on, we have another explosion."

"Woah, hold on, people are running up the street. The whole building is exploding!" The eye witness exclaimed.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and shook her head, she knew as soon as she'd seen the black blur fly in from the right and the plume of flames erupt from the left, that another plane had hit one of the towers. There was simply no doubt about it, this wasn't an accident, it was an act of war.


	2. Chapter 2

The image of the second plane hitting the tower played on loop in her mind as she choked back a sob. The guilt was overpowering, she could have prevented this, she _should_ have prevented this. Her cell phone vibrated in her hands and momentarily caught her attention, she looked at the screen, Henry was calling her. _Oh God Henry, what have I done?_

"Hello." She said monotonously, answering the phone.

"Babe, I'm on my way home, classes have all been cancelled for today, did you see?" Henry said, his voice echoing in the car over the hands-free kit.

"Yeah, I uh, I'm watching it now." Elizabeth said, balancing her cellphone in the crook of her neck.

"It's horrific, I can't believe it." Henry said. "I'm going to go and collect Jason from day care, I imagine they're probably closing up shop for the day."

"Uh-huh." Elizabeth muttered, her eyes still glued to the TV screen.

"Is everything okay?" Henry asked.

"What?" Elizabeth asked, pulling herself back into the moment. "Uh, yeah, I'm fine. Listen, Henry – can you pick up Ali and Stevie too?" She asked.

"Are you sure? I don't think the schools are going to close."

"Yeah, please – go get them, I want – I need them to be home." Elizabeth said.

"Alright babe, I'll be back as soon as I can. Crazy day, huh?" He asked.

"You have no idea." Elizabeth replied, and hung up the phone, she checked her watch, it was now 9:30 AM, she hoped to God that everyone below the impact zones were making their way safely out of the towers, she couldn't allow her mind to think about those above the impact zones just yet, it was too horrible to think about. She thought about it for a little while, realising the number of casualties could be considerably lower than they'd estimated if, and that was a solid _if_ everybody from the south tower had evacuated when the first plane had hit, it was a long shot and she knew it, but she held onto it with everything she had.

Suddenly the breaking news headline caption updated on the screen reading _CNN learns plane hit pengtagon._ Elizabeth wanted to scream, how many intende targets were there? How could they have missed a planned attack this big? When the President had invaded her TV screen with talk of how "Terrorism against our nation will not stand." And "Our government will hunt down those responsible." She let out a hollow laugh.

"Too little too late, Mr. President." She muttered to herself. She'd practically gift wrapped that dossier and left it sitting on his lap and he'd chosen to ignore it, he could go to hell, for all she cared. She was happy to hear that other major buildings were now beginning to be evacuated, as any one of them could potentially be targeted.

The moments ticked by as she continued to watch the broadcast, eyes glued to the screen; she really hoped that Henry would be back soon so that she could hold her babies, so that he could hold her in his arms as she admitted to him the awful truth that she had known an attack like this was coming, so that maybe, just maybe he'd help her to feel a little less guilt about the whole thing.

The live picture on the screen hadn't changed much over the past twenty minutes, the smoke still bellowed out of the two buildings, she supposed that the smoke seemed a little darker now, then she noticed it, something miniscule falling from high up on one of the towers, the live feed wasn't very zoomed in, and from this distance it looked no bigger than an ant.

"Oh no, no, no, no!" She cried as the realisation hit her; that was no ant, that was a person. A human being, possibly somebodies husband or wife, somebody's mother or father, had just leapt from one of the windows of the World Trade Center. She felt sick with sorrow as she imagined the circumstances which caused that poor soul to choose to end their life in this way. She had barely began to cry out for the first victim when she saw another fall, then another, and another after that.

"Oh my God." She whispered, it was too much. She figured they must have been trapped above the impact zone, unable to escape, their worlds darkening amongst the black plumes of smoke, she couldn't even imagine. Elizabeth had seen a lot of devastation in her life time, working for the CIA had been no walk in the park, she'd seen the aftermath of suicide bombings, destruction all around her and yet nothing compared to this.

Suddenly, the New York City skyline seemed to erupt in giant plumes of white smoke, Elizabeth watched in horror as one of the towers, which had stood proud for so many years up until this very moment, began to fall to the ground. Her mouth dropped open, unable to make a sound and unable to pull her eyes away from the screen, she watched until the dust begin to settle, a huge blank space occupying the place where the tower once stood. She knew it had been the south tower that had fallen, and she knew that the plane had impacted the building much lower down than the one that had hit the north tower. Just how many people had been trapped in that tower above where the plane had hit? Exactly how many lives had just been extinguished within five mere seconds? She fell to her knees on the kitchen floor and openly sobbed.

* * *

Henry sighed as he opened the door to the backseat of the car and unbuckled Stevie and Alison from their car seats. The school had given him no trouble when he said he'd come to take his daughters home, apparently a lot of other parents of students at their school had done the same.

"Stevie, take your sister into the house please, I'm going to get your brother." Henry told his eldest daughter.

"Okay daddy." Stevie chirped happily. Henry smiled at her, grateful that she was too young to understand what was going on in the world right now.

"Atta girl, go give mommy a hug." He said, walking towards the passenger seat and opened the door. He was so grateful that they'd invested in one of those new, all singing all dancing car models that allowed you to turn off the airbags in the front, every day he faced arguments between Stevie and Alison about who got to sit up front with him, and now that they were able to put Jason in the front, that solved all of his problems. Jason had fallen asleep on the ride home, so Henry was very careful unbuckling him and picking him up, so as not to wake him.

With Jason bundled in his arms, he turned around, closed the passenger door, locked the car and headed towards the house. He was alarmed when Stevie and Alison ran back out of the house and over to meet him.

"Daddy, mama's crying." Stevie said, she looked confused. Henry paused, feeling a little concerned.

"Okay baby, I'm going put Jason down and then I'll go see if mommy's okay. You take Ali and go and play in the playroom, okay?"

"Okay daddy." Stevie said, she took Ali's hand and the pair of them ran off, back into the house.

Henry entered the house and first called into the living room, he was surprised to see Elizabeth wasn't there. He sighed and grabbed the baby rocker from the living room floor and set off to find her. When he walked into the kitchen he recoiled at the sight of his wife curled up on the kitchen floor, sobbing – the TV still on playing loops of the footage of the towers falling. He wasn't surprised, he'd heard it on the news in the car as he'd been to pick the kids up, but seeing it actually happen on screen was terrifying, although he had to wonder why it had effected Elizabeth so badly.

He placed the baby rocker down on the kitchen floor near Elizabeth and bundled the sleeping baby into it, buckling him in so he wouldn't fall out. He then shuffled along the floor and laid down next to his sobbing wife, when she realised he was there she began to cry even harder.

"Hey! Hey now, what's wrong?" Henry asked.

"He-Henry, they both fell." Elizabeth sobbed.

"The towers? I know, I heard about it on the radio, it's awful." Henry said, rubbing her shoulder, trying to get her to sit up.

"It's – it's my fault!" She cried as she allowed him to lift her into a sitting position and rested her head against one of the kitchen cupboards.

"Uh, how is _this.._ " He pointed to the TV. "Your fault?" He asked.

"I have to tell you something." She said, between deep raspy breaths, Henry held her hand.

"Go on?" He prompted her.

"The reason I left the CIA, it wasn't because I wanted a career change." She said, wiping away her tears with the sleeve of her pyjama top.

"Okay..?" Henry half asked, waiting for her to continue.

"Earlier this year I uncovered intel that a huge terrorist attack against the US was being plotted." Elizabeth explained, Henry's eyes widened in horror.

"I knew it was going to be huge, and it would potentially kill thousands of Americans." She continued. "I tried, Henry, I tried for _months_ to be heard. I went to everyone on my level, then I went to our superiors, then I went to their superiors, but nobody would listen."

She paused, as she began to cry again.

"Oh babe." Henry sighed. "I'm so sorry, why didn't you tell me?" He asked.

"I couldn't." Elizabeth cried. "It was all classified."

Henry nodded, it wasn't the first time that Elizabeth had to keep quiet about things going on at work.

"I took all my findings to Conrad, I gave him the dossier, he took it to the next presidential briefing but they shot him down." Elizabeth explained.

"And that's why you resigned?" Henry asked, stroking her hand.

"I couldn't work there if they were going to willingly ignore intel that could potentially kill thousands of people." Elizabeth sighed.

"You made the right choice." Henry said, without a doubt.

"Did I though?" Elizabeth asked. "What if I'd stayed? What if I refused to be ignored any longer? Is all of this.." She pointed towards the TV. "Because of me? Could I have done anything differently? Did thousands of people just die because of me?"

Henry's heart broke a little more with every question she asked him, he couldn't believe that his wife had been living with these kind of worries on her mind for all these months and he hadn't noticed.

"Babe, none of this is on you." He said, finally.

"It's not?" She asked, her voice a little weak.

"Of course not. Babe, you did everything you were supposed to do, you got the intel, you analysed it, you saw the threat, you escalated it."

"So I couldn't have prevented this?"

"Not in my opinion no, there are people way higher up than you who are responsible for acting on this information, you made the info available to those people and they chose not to act."

"I feel so guilty, Henry – I just watched thousands of people die on national television." She said.

"I'm so sorry you had to be alone through all this." He told her, cupping her face with his hand. Elizabeth grabbed his free hand with her own and squeezed it tightly, she turned to look back at the TV which now showed the eerily quiet and dust ridden New York City.

"Everything's going to be different now, isn't it?" She asked him.

"Yes, I expect it is." Henry sighed.

Elizabeth sighed and looked at her sleeping baby boy in the rocker just next to her on the kitchen floor, he was so innocent and so beautiful, her heart slowly ached knowing that this was the kind of world her children were going to grow up in, but for now she was thankful beyond words to have her family by her side.


End file.
